I get english, and reading/language arts (which is english), math, science, foreign languages I suppose is a wobbler for me, civics and government smells a bit like history, but sure, count it separate, economics is pretty important, as well as history and geography...but arts? Plain old arts?

I'm sorry, but if people want to make paper mache, or paint, or draw, or throw pots, you can do that on your own damn time. It's akin to having "computer gaming", or "stamp collecting" a core academic subject -> art is a *hobby*, not an academic subject.

No, it tends to be looking at a building that has collapsed because it was artful, but structurally unsound, when people go all, "wow, that was really pretty, but didn't have a lot of structural integrity."

That being said, for a job that has only around 100k jobs in the US, out of a total of 150 million, doesn't seem like it warrants being a core subject: